


Contact Details

by TheLockPickingVictorian



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-07
Updated: 2014-10-27
Packaged: 2018-02-20 06:53:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2419199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLockPickingVictorian/pseuds/TheLockPickingVictorian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When they first meet, as well as agreeing to salvage what she can from his bullet-ridden laptop, Felicity Smoak also gives her boss' step-son a crash course into the workings of smartphones.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Felicity Smoak

"I have prior engagements that I need to be seeing to, Felicity." He told her, standing from his chair, dusting his front for non-extant crumbs, even though they hadn't even been eating. Of course, the movement just drew her eyes to his… all of him, as he did so, and she turned back to her computer and the bullet riddled laptop.

"Oh, sure!" She nodded thoughtfully, refusing to let her mind wander to exactly what Oliver Queen - the king of holy-shit-he's-gorgeous, ironic considering he was actually a Queen - was covering with that shirt. Given the size of those shoulder, she was pretty sure he was  _built._ "So, I'll get what I can off of this and… what? Email you when I'm done?" Because there was no way in hell that she was going to ask for Oliver Queen's phone number.

"It's Twenty-Twelve Felicity." He smiled, tilting his head at her. "Are you still Emailing people for their attention? I though you were the Tech-Geek." She glanced up at him and then down to her tablet, refusing to bring her hand up to rub at her sternum, where the ache was blossoming. "Hey? Felicity?" She shook her head, more because it was stupid of her to let his joke affect her the way it did than in return to him, but he took it that way anyway.

"Felicity." He laid a hand over hers on the computer mouse when she tuned to it. "Hey, I'm sorry. You're doing me a huge favour here. I didn't mean it like that." She nodded slowly staring down at his hand over hers. He was h- Warm. He was warm. Not any other synonym for warm. Defiantly warm.

"Yeah." She nodded again, more certainly this time. "It's fine. Don't worry about it. I'll get this done and you can come back in… an hour or so?" Oliver smiled at her.

"Why don't you call me when you're done, huh?"

"Great idea!" That she'd thought of at least ten minutes ago. But she passed him over a stack of post-it notes and rooted through one of her draws for a pen that she hadn't been chewing on when he walked through her door. He pulled a very odd (but still very attractive) face.

"Can you, uh…" He sighed. "Five years on an island. New phone; new number. I don't…"

"Oh right!" She nodded, reaching for the pad herself, and he offered her the small, rounded touch-scene phone. She slid it from between his fingers carefully, not touching him any more than necessary, and sighed when she found that it wasn't password protected. She typed her number in quickly, almost without looking, and her name too, to insure the spelling was right. She handed it back with a smile. "You might want to set up a password on that thing. I can imagine people would pay a pretty penny for the gossip straight from Oliver Queen's phone." He stared down at the phone in his hand.

"I hadn't though of that." He laughed, surprised. "You really are a genius, Felicity Smoak."

"Only on paper." She grinned up at him, tilting her head, but her nose curled almost automatically. "Actually, that's not true…" He laughed, thumbing at his phone for a second, before her own vibrated against her leg. She knew that she flushed in embarrassment as she fished it out from under her. "I'm not supposed to use it at work, but I don't like to be too far away from it." She had one text from an unknown number.

_Oliver. :-)_

She laughed slightly. Big, strong, gorgeous Oliver Queen using emoticons was… well, slightly adorable, actually.

_Welcome to the IT department, Oliver._

He laughed down at his phone and smiled up at her as she tucked her phone back under her again. Something hit her as she watched him flick the phone off, and of course because her brain belonged to her, it slipped out of her mouth before she had chance to stop it.

"Not a picture guy, huh?" She asked as she watched him slip the phone into his back pocked. Not that she was looking there. Not at all.

"Pardon?" He paused, raising an eyebrow.

"Contact photos." She tilted her head at him and, if at all possible, he looked even more confused. "You know, the little picture that you put with a number? So that you know who that person is when they call?"

"Is that a new thing?"

"I think. Last few years or so? Don't you have a younger sister? Why hasn't she explained this to you?!"

"Things with Thea have been… tense, since I've come home. She's not really in the mood to teach me how phones work." Oliver sighed, and she watched as a dark shadow flicked through his eyes as he glanced off to the side.

"God, I'm sorry!" She rushed, leaning forward in her chair to grab his wrist, only to pull back at the last second and reach of a pencil when she remembered who she was talking to. She'd forgotten then, just for a second, who she was with. "I didn't mean-"

"Felicity, it's fine." He shook his head, watching her hand. He pulled the phone out of his pocket again. "So…"

"Oh it's easy!" She promised, taking it from him again. "The little camera next to the number when you input it into your phone? That takes you to the camera. See?" She clicked it and handed it back. "Easy as pie!"

"Huh." He blinked. "That's…. easy." He turned the camera to her with a smile, and she threw her arm up to cover her face.

"No!" She cried out, and several of her co-works turned to look at her, so she slapped her hand over her mouth, using the other to push the phone away. "No. No photos of me. They never come out looking even half decent."

"But if I'm password protecting the phone, who's going to see it?" Oliver Queen - smart-arse, billionaire, playboy… did he have any other titles she would benefit from knowing? "Answer: No one but me." Question: was he flirting with her?

"I uh…" She itched at the side of her nose, pushing her glasses down slightly. "Fine. But I reserve the right of it to be deleted if it's terrible!" He grinned, far to smug with himself.

"It won't be." He was smiling at her and his grin was far too infectious, and it wasn't long before she was smiling back at him, chewing at the inside of her lip to keep herself grounded. "Gotcha!" He turned the phone to her. When exactly had he taken that picture?

"Huh." She smiled slight, tilting her head at him. "Maybe it just depends on the quality of the photographer." Okay, was she flirting with him now?!

"Maybe it does." He sounded thoughtful, and she glanced back at her computer, checking the clock.

"You have prior engagements, Oliver, remember?" She asked, tapping the screen lightly. "Aren't you going to be late?"

"The joy of phones, Felicity." He waved it in the air slightly. "I can call ahead and say I'm running late." But, even as he said it, he tucked the phone back into his pocket. She smiled.

"I'll text when I crack this thing." She said softly, nudging the bullet ridden laptop with her elbow. "I think if I call, I'll interrupt something important. I have  _zero_  luck like that."

"Call anyway." Oliver shook his head as he tapped the laptop. "This is important too." She nodded and he offered her a hand. "Thank you for your help, Felicity."

"Maybe you should wait until I have something for you to thank me." She took his offered hand anyway, his fingers tightening around hers until she felt tiny. "Not that I think that it's going to happen, but I might be completely useless to your cause."

"Somehow I doubt that." Oliver shook his head and turned on his heel.

She laughed to herself, touching her hair self-consciously once he was out the door. She was just plugging the laptop into her desktop when her phone vibrated under her leg.

_Oliver: Call me._

_Can't._  She sent back, glancing over her shoulder to check that her supervisor wasn't watching.  _I've got data to retrieve from a shot-up laptop!_

_Oliver: A latte covered laptop, actually. You know what I meant._

_Of course. Give me an hour._

Felicity wasn't a photo person herself, either. There wasn't a single number in her contacts that had a photo attached to it. But there was that little box, sat next to Oliver's name, that was begging to be filled.

She huffed out a breath through her nose, a smile on her lips as she turned back to her work. She'd get one next time he stopped by, once she'd recovered what she could from 'his' laptop.

 


	2. Oliver Queen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I know this isn't as good as the first one (which wasn't good in the first place) but at last, at more than three times the length of the first chapter, the second one is finally done!!

She left her desk in the IT department dead on five, refusing to linger even when she was called back by Adam - the cute tech boy who insisted that he was smarter than her, which really was both irritating and his only and biggest fault - caught her arm to ask her for a drink. She turned him down, even when she'd been planning on asking him out not three days ago, because for the first time in a very long while, Felicity had somewhere to be.

With a very hot guy.

A very hot guy who was currently hovering outside the door to the IT department, his back to her and his bodyguard - assistant, sidekick, partner, friend - stood in front of him, silently, nodding disinterestedly at what he was saying. John Diggle, or ‘Digg’ as he asked her to call him, smiled gently at her when he spotted her and elbowed Oliver in the ribs, drawing his attention to her as she drew near them.

“Felicity.” Oliver smiled, turning around to smile at her, and suddenly, just like that, Adam had somewhere to be that wasn’t following her around. Oliver watched him go out of the corner of his eye. “Are you coming in today?” And by _in_ , he meant was she coming to the basement of his fathers old factory, his soon to be nightclub, to hack computers and break laws while he dressed up in green leather and shot people full of arrows. Yeah, it wasn’t like he could say that out loud at his family’s company.

“That was the plan.” She nodded, re-shouldering her heavy bag. “Why are you here? I thought I was going to meet you there?”

“Well,” And while Oliver scratched the back of his head, Digg snorted at his side. “I remember that you said something about your car lease not covering blood stains on the back seat. At least, I hope you said it, otherwise I lost more blood than I though I did.” She nodded at him, because yes, she definitely did remember saying that. “So I’ve had a word with some friends of mine, who’ll get that particular issue fixed.”

“Long story short;” Digg cut in when Oliver fell silent. “The white knight here decided to pay for your car being fixed, and their going to drop it off at your place later, but he conventionally forgot that you might have needed your car today.” He patted the younger man’s shoulder, and Oliver glared at him. I really was a good thing that looks couldn’t kill. She rather liked John.

“We came to offer you a lift.” Oliver shrugged, as though he didn’t care about the way that Diggle was teasing him.

“Or more correctly,” Diggle continued, “I’ve come to offer you a lift since I’ll be the one driving, and Oliver decided to tag along for reasons so far unknown.” Oliver shrugged again.

“A lift would be lovely, thank you Diggle.” Felicity nodded, falling into step with the two of them. Which wasn’t actually the easiest thing to do, given how they both towered over her, and she had to take two quick paces to match a single one of theirs. They didn’t patronise her by slowing down like most people did, which she was kind of pleased about. Okay, irrationally pleased about, but they didn’t need to know that. She glanced at Oliver sideways, uncertainly. “Should you even be up? You were shot like, three days ago. You _flatlined_ three days ago.”

“I’ve had worse.” He told her, flatly.

“But your heart’s never stopped before, has it?” She asked in as whisper as they slipped through the lift doors before they closed. Diggle jammed down a finger on the button marked ‘ground floor’. She clutched at the bar against the wall by instinct. She’d never liked lifts much. “If your heart stopped on that island, there’d be no way to restart it, right? No electricity, no defibrillator and all that. And you’re here, so, no heart stopping on the island. Unless its happened since you came back...” She chewed on her bottom lip at the silence that greeted her, tucking her chin down into her scarf. “Sorry. I’m shutting up now. Promise.”

“It’s okay.” Oliver sighed behind her, and she could practically _feel_ him hesitate before dropping a hand onto her shoulder. “No, I’ve never gone into cardiac arrest before, but I’ve had worse injuries than a bullet wound.”

“I noticed.” She muttered as the doors in front of her opened. All those scars that covered so much of his front, and that was only his chest…

She kept the silence until she slipped into the back of Diggle’s car, or it may have been Oliver’s, she wasn’t sure on that, parked where her mini cooper had been, still chewing her lip.

“You okay?” Oliver asked, turning around in the front seat to look at her. “I don’t think I’ve ever know you to be so quiet.” She nodded. And then again. And again.

“Sure.” But her voice came out all squeaky, so she cleared her throat before trying again. “Sure. I’m fine. Long day, is all. In IT. Answering phones and changing security questions. Crawling around under the desk of some of the creeps that your company’s employed. You know - the usual.” Digg smiled at her through the rear view mirror. “Everything is a-okay.”

Diggle let her out of the car as discreetly as possible when they reached the club and Oliver guided her down to the basement while the ex soldier parked the car somewhere obvious. People had to know that Oliver Queen was in his club. No one wanted to know about the blonde that he had brought with him. In fact, it was safer for all of them, from both that weeks big bad and the media, that Felicity Smoak remained a nobody.

By the time Digg joined them underground, she had all the computers booted up and Oliver was up on his bar-climbing-pull-up-thing (it was called a Salmon Ladder, Digg had told her while Oliver was unconscious, but she couldn’t find anything fishy about it. Except Oliver’s ability to do it after being shot) and it wasn’t exactly easy to focus on the screens with that view right over her head. Because, her assumption of him being built? Totally wrong. The guy was _beyond_ built, to the point where the multitude of scars didn’t even taint the view. She didn’t like think about them too deeply. It just made her heart hurt.

“That’s not good for you Oliver.” The older man commented, voicing her internal concerns in a way that she was still too circumspectius to do so. “How many times do we have to remind you that you were shot?”

“It’s not like I had time to rest and recuperate on the island, Digg.” Oliver pointed out with a roll of his eyes but he let go of the bar anyway, landing surely on his feet.

“But how do you get the bar back down again?” Felicity muttered under her breath, leaning back in her computed chair to look up at the abandoned bar. She was pretty sure that Oliver could pick her up and she still wouldn’t be able to reach it. Not that he would pick her up. In anyway. Because Felicity Smoak was definitely not the kind of woman the Oliver Queen picked up. Ever.

But clearly the man had super hearing to go with his super strength, because he shot her a quick wink and one word: “Magic.”

And she turned her back on him, because there was absolutely no way she was putting up with that bullshit. Even if he was devastatingly hot. Which did not help, because now Diggle was laughing at her, and honestly she couldn’t be that amusing, even if she had had people laughing at her her whole life. But they weren’t all laughing at her for nice reasons. At least Digg was.

“I think it’ll be good to have you with us, Smoak.” He told her, touching her arm gently. “We could use someone to keep our spirits up.”

“Ah, shut up, Digg.” She smiled, batting his hand away from her playfully with a smile. And he disappeared behind one of the box of she-wasn’t-exactly-sure-of-what, leaving her with Oliver as he searched through his bag for a t-shirt.

“You know,” She hummed thoughtfully, leaning back in her chair to look at him as he approached her. “If I set up an online trail for every guy or girl in that book, or at least a decent sized handful - not one of my handfuls, considering my hands are tiny, but someone like you or Digg who are of an impressive size. Not that you can actually pick up a handful of names, since they’re in a book… I mean how many is actually in a handful? Its a really bad unit of measurement when you think about it…” And Oliver stood there, smiling slightly at her as though she was doing something endearing, which she most definitely was not doing, since the constant talking was in no way endearing. It was just annoying.   

“Anyway, if I pick out a currently undetermined number of people from your father’s list, there would be an awful lot less of this waiting around. We’d just get updates of all the stuff they’re up to and we wouldn’t be sitting here, tapping our fingers until the pick of the week decides to do something illegal.”

“You can do that?” Oliver asked her, his eyebrow raising slightly and she turned the chair fully, ducking her head to avoid his elbow, and blinked slowly, staring at him as her face contorted. “Okay, so that’s a ‘yes’ then.”

“Not to brag or anything, but I’ve hacked into all kinds of databases and companies, and you ask if I can run a internet search?” She asked raised her own eyebrow at him in return. “Why do you even need me here?”

“Because I missed five years of technological advancements and Diggle was at war for some of it. Nothing would get done without you, Felicity.” He told her softly, touching her shoulder and squeezing loosely.

“Well you managed pretty well without me for long enough.” She pointed out, shrugging.

“Because I kept coming to you for help!” Oliver protested, leaning his hip up against the desk behind her, his arm coming far too close to the - her - computers for her liking. And, quite unwisely, she decided to smack at the arm of a very big, lethal vigilante in fine meters from his bow.

“Watch the computers!” She demanded, the flesh of her hand stinging more than his probably was wheres she’d hit him. “I swear to god Oliver, you damage them and I will freeze all your bank accounts and then where will you be?”

“Using cash.” He shot back, apparently completely unfazed by her words and actions.

“You have the official opening of your club in under an hour.” She told him, reaching over to tap the clock in the corner of the middle screen to prove her point. Oliver’s eyes followed her finger from the screen and into her lap where she folded them, like he was trying to unravel her past through the colour of her fingernails. They were a pale violet now, changed from the baby blue they had been two day because they had ended up stained with blood. Oliver’s blood. Good luck with that one Mr. Queen, was what they said to that. “Shouldn’t you be getting ready?”

“Men don’t need to spend an hour getting ready, Felicity.”

“Shut _up_ , Oliver.”

And thankfully for her, he did, sauntering off in the other direction that Digg had gone in to find the bag - yet another one. She was really beginning to question how many different bags, all identical, she’d noticed, he had stashed down here and just how inconspicuous that was - with his not-green suit in. Unless the tie was green, which she doubted it would be. Oliver Queen had an aversion to green - the public Oliver Queen, that was, not the one that spent his life in green.

But her computer beeped at her, calling her down into the ones and zeros and pictoids until she could almost see them in the basement and boxes and pipes that surrounded her (eat your heart out, Keanu Reeves). Oliver and Digg came and went around her, floating through her awareness like ghosts, passing in large blurry shapes out of the side of her glasses, disappearing out on patrol and for food and coffee runs and storage-room-checks. Switching periodically between the three monitors, seemingly splitting her bairn into several chunks and assigning a chunk to each task as she worked on them.

“Felicity?”

“Geez-us, seriously?!” She squeaked, turning in her chair to glare at the sneaky-arse bastard as he skipped the last five steps and landing silently on foundry floor. “We need to get you a bell if you’re going to keep sneaking around.”

“Yeah I don’t think that would work with the whole ‘breaking and entering’ thing.” Oliver deadpanned, loosening the tie around his neck and undoing the top button that seemed to take quite a lot of joy in choked him. “Vigilante-ing doesn’t seem to be the sort of thing that you can do while wearing a bell.”

“Party go all right?” She asked, tilting her head and wincing at the crack in her neck that sounded when she adjusted her head. He winced back in sympathy at the loud pop, shrugging.

“Not really the party type any more.” He sighed, dragging one of the swivel chairs over to sit opposite her, watching her closely. “Takes all the fun out of drinking when you might need to be as sober as possible in as little as ten minutes.”

“Ah, well, I can see why there’s an abundance of vodka that would have been thrown up on the pavement if you hadn’t got on that boat.” He raised an eyebrow at her questioningly. “Tommy’s birthday, 2002? You decided to spend his 17th in every club imaginable and the day after his 17th in the police station working off hangovers?”

“I don’t remember that. But then, vodka leaves holes in my memory. I never realised before just how much I hate that.” He shrugged, folding his arms as he leveled her with an amused, crooked smile. “A better question is: How do you know about that.”

“The internet never forgets, Oliver.” She told her smartly, the corners of her mouth pulling up until her cheeks ached. He pulled a face at her, and she clapped a hand over her mouth to stop the eruption of giggles that wanted out of her throat. If only the criminals who he spent his nights putting the fear of god into could see him now-

But his face softened into a gentle smile, the wrinkles around his eyes crinkling in the same place as they did when he was angry, or when his face contorted in pain, but the overall effect was so… different. He looked more like the playboy who had let himself into her office months back, but who he was now was almost perpendicular to that character. That Oliver was fake, using the charming smile as a get out of jail free card when he didn’t want to answer questions. This Oliver, this smile, real. It translated in the bright glint in his eye, and she could almost see the mischievous young boy he didn’t want to be anymore. This Oliver didn’t mind answering her questions.

And as quickly as she could, she slipped her phone from her back pocket and caught the instant, the dark lights of the foundry blacking out all but his profile, the flash catching the shining highlights perfectly.   

He blinked, once, twice and then one long blink, the lines and angles in his face contorting until he looked like a confused little puppy. Okay, no, Oliver Queen was not the sort of person that could easily be compared to a puppy. Maybe if you took away twenty years worth of experience, removed the existence of that island from the universe and removed about half his body weight, he’d could just pass the needed requirements for puppyism.

“Felicity?” He asked as she tucked the phone back into her pocket. “What…?” She shrugged one shoulder, raising the corners of her mouth at him, refusing to feel even the slightest twinge of doubt at the action.

“You have that contact photo of me. It’s only fair that I have one of you.” She pointed out as straight-faced as possible. “An eye for an eye and all that. ”

“Yeah I’ve never been a fan of that expression.” He told her, flicking at the nail of his middle finger with his thumb. “Is there anything….”

“Nope.” And turned the phone to him like he had done to her, flashing the photo in his face. “No pointy things, nothing green, nothing but black and Oliver. Nothing incriminating.” She smiled brighter. “We are good to go.”

“How do you always know what I’m going to say?” He asked quietly, the muscles in his face flickering between emotions.

“Magic.” She parroted back, clicking her her tongue repeatedly. And Oliver rolled his eyes at her, but the corners of his mouth raised slightly, like he was fighting the instinct to grin at her like a mad man. And there was a part of her, the part of her that wanted to ball his eyes every time she saw his scars and what they meant hammered its way into her brain, that wanted to see that, to see what Oliver Queen looked like with all the instincts that the island had left him with crumpled at his feet.

“You’re cute.” He cachinnated gently, tilting his head at her. She smiled gently as she wondered whether it was something he’d always done if he’d picked it up from her on route. But she let her head fall back on a half moan and half groan. “What?”

“I’m not cute.”

“You are!” He insisted, reaching across the space between them to touch her. “You are very cute. All big blue eyes and curly blonde hair…”

“How much did you drink?” She laughed, but his hand was warm on her shoulder and she tilted her head into it, closing her eyes, trying not to let the warmth pull her down into the world of unconscious she’d been fighting all night.

“I don’t know.” He shrugged again. “One or two, at least five of the stupid blue things that Tommy gave me.” He climbed steadily to his feet though, pushing his chair neatly back under the desk, his steps and balance sure as he moved. “Not entirely sure what the blue stuff was, but I can walk in a straight line.”

“So if Digg was to attack you right now, you’d be able to trump him, yeah?” And watching out the corners of her eye as he moved away from her to gather their coats, she turned back to her computers to back-up, mirror and turn them off.

“Sure.” He nodded. “But, I’m trying to save the city, so I really don’t think I ought to be drinking and driving.” He smiled sweetly at her, and again she was taken back to that first day, of how he attempted (and succeeded) to charm her into what he wanted her to do. “I don’t suppose I could wrangle a lift home from you.”

“Well I don’t know…” She sighed mockingly, chewing on her lower lip. “Its so far out of my way. And the mansion is so intimidating! And no one says ‘wrangle’ these days, Oliver!”

“It’s just a house, Felicity.” He was apparently ignoring her constructive criticism as usual, his strong, capable hands helping her guide her arms into her coat and untucking her hair from the collar with such tender care that if she didn’t know that he spent his nights beating the living shit out of people in the street, she would never have believed it. “I’ll owe you one?” He offered teasingly. “You prefer red, right?”

“Don’t you already owe me a bottle of wine?” She asked seriously, buttoning the jacket herself as Oliver backed off to watch her quietly. “Because, you know, I’m nice enough that a pay up of just one of these debts will be fine.”

“I’m a billionaire, Felicity.” He told her, swooping her bag off of the floor for her, either intent on the whole... adulating-thing. Or he was just really into being helpful tonight. Or maybe both. “I am more than capable of buying you two bottles of wine.”

“No!” She turned to face him sharply, pointing a finger at his face. His eyes tracked the finger for a moment, crossing his eyes for a brief moment when she got to close, before he met her eyes again quickly. “No, you will not be doing that. I will not be the moneygrabber here! That is not what I do!”

“I know it’s not.” He huffed out that little laugh again, the one that sounded like he’d tried not to let it out but it had escaped him anyway. “You’re the cute little IT girl who hacks federal databases and gives her boss’s step son a lift home when he’s too drunk to do it himself.”

“I thought you weren’t drunk.” She laughed back at him.

“Details, Smoak. No one likes a smart-aleck.”

“I’ll just go then,” She told him with a smile, pointing at the stairs but she clutched one hand over her heart at the same time, leaning back on her desk as though her knees wouldn’t support her properly. “I just leave right now if you don’t think that you need me and my mad hacking skils anymore. Good luck finding Walter without me.”

“Hey,” And his hand caught her elbow lightly, his eyebrows slanting in while the rest of his face contorted. “I didn’t really upset you, did I?”

Surprised, she shook her head sharply, but kept her voice soft for his benefit. “No, why?”

“Because you’re pulling that face again and I can’t tell if you mean it or not,” He told her lowly, his shoulders sinking slightly in what she believed was relief. “I promised John I’d protect you, and I don’t like the idea of breaking that promise by hurting you because I’m an idiotic dick-head.”

“Hey. Oliver.” She berated softly, pushing up on the tips of her toes and laying her hands on his shoulders carefully and slowly, as to not spook him and keep herself stable as well. It was worrying enough that she’d never heard him say so many words consecutively, she didn’t need to scare him off by getting too close then he was okay with dealing with. “I’m fine, I promise. And you don’t have to protect me, I’m not that breakable.”

“Maybe not.” He nodded. “But then you’ve never had to live with a life style like mine before.”  

“But keeping me safe isn’t your job, Oliver.” She told him softly, sliding a hand up to touch the soft stubble on his cheek. “Even though, it seems like tonight its my job to keep you safe. Is this how Diggle normally feels when he drives you places?” She asked, sweeping her bag up from the floor and entwining her fingers with hers as she lead him away from the computers.

“Come on then, Mr. Queen. Let me take you home.” And she choked on nothing then, turning sharply to look back at him, her eyes wide as she walked backwards. “To your home, not mine. I did not mean that!”

“I thought so.” He smiled as he nodded, his hand trapped in hers as she dragged him along as much as she could. He followed her willingly though, making the job about ten times easier for her. “Thank you, Felicity. I will make it up to you this time, promise.”

“You better wait until you’re not drunk to make that promise, Oliver.” She laughed. “You never know what you’re going to remember tomorrow!”

“Not drunk.”

“Sure. Whatever. Keep believing that.”

And the whole journey back, it didn’t seem like Oliver stopped complaining once. Whether it was on the status of his sobriety, the size of her mini (which Digg had picked up from her house earlier, when they realised that she wouldn’t be leaving until after he’d left and no one trusted the condition of the glades nowadays) and how he didn’t fit inside it probably, or on the route she took to get them to the Queen’s mansion. She decided them that she liked fully sober Oliver more than half sober Oliver.

That didn’t mean that she didn’t set that image as his contact photo. And that also didn’t mean that it made her smile whenever it appeared on her screen.

Although, that may have been due to who was calling rather than the picture itself. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, I'll admit that I never had any plans for a second half, but then my computer decided to untick the complete button and people thought that I had planned one, and then they we're asking, and then I had to write it because the idea wouldn't leave me alone.
> 
> Thank you for putting up with me! xx

**Author's Note:**

> Originally prompted and posted on my tumblr, and this is probably the quickest thing I've ever written, so I apologise if it is terrible.
> 
> TLPV Xx


End file.
